Published 4:00 am, Thursday, February 12, 2009

I was still reeling from the recent issue of mainstream porn's leading magazine, Adult Video News, proclaiming that "interracial porn" was going to be the "recession proof" umbrella for the industry, when one of my closest friends appeared on my doorstep with all of his office belongings. Soon, the news leaked out onto Twitter: a local porn company had just laid off 13 of its staff.

We didn't make the obvious jokes about being "laid off" by a porn company, but one friend did email me later in the day commenting, "...of all the gloom and doom economic stuff I heard at TED, and all the stuff in the paper, nothing beats that for Bad News. If the porn industry is laying people off, we are all f--ed. Truly a chilling harbinger..." So much for the myth that porn is the "last refuge" for job-seekers (and therefore the most shameful, as why else would anyone work in porn?)

When you look at the whole picture, the U.S. porn industry was once seen as being at the forefront of things like technology and free expression, but it's never been more clear that it has yet to start dragging itself into the 21st century. The recession is one thing; technology has crushed mainstream porn's business models, period. With an industry still clinging to DVD sales as its steak and potatoes, the self-induced recession was inevitable.

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And then there's the interracial porn genre, which remains a vehicle for outmoded and offensive racial, ethnic, and gender stereotypes. Last Thursday TheSword.com's headline brayed, "'Negro' Porn Recession Proof, Claims AVN" (link NSFW). The blog posted about the "Black Humor" issue, where AVN magazine explains how marketing to America's toxic preoccupation with race differences is the answer to mainstream porn's declining sales -- while framing this "marketing distinction" from run-of-the-mill porn, as funny.

On closer inspection, there's something more than a little disingenuous about AVN's sense of humor. We all know that porn is built to part you with your hard-earned cash and proffer fantasies; sometimes certain kinds of fantasy or roleplaying can be sexy: taboos, whether actual or perceived, are always hot, right? The positive ability of porn is that is can show partnering that is charged because it crosses racial boundaries; I believe that damage is not done by the FACT of crossing those taboos, but in the WAY those taboos are crossed. But ultimately, most of us just want to watch different kinds of people coming together without the racist baggage. TheSword.com followed its headline with:

Adult industry trade magazine Adult Video News has the answer to porn producers faced with declining sales: more use of the word Negro! In this month's 'Black Humor' issue of AVN, the notoriously enlightened porn-producing community claims that only a Communist would keep the public from quality product like 'Oh No! There's A Negro in My Mom!'

'Whatever stereotypes are out there ... should be depicted on camera in order for the projects to feel realistic,' says Julius Ceazher, star of Black C--ks, Tiny Teens. 'Someone who puts out a racially insensitive title could be viewed as a capitalist.' The public gets what it wants, say the producers: interracial titles are one of the few bright spots in an industry faced with falling DVD sales, competition from tube sites and a terrible economy. Besides: black jokes are just a form of humor, says Ceazar, not racism. 'If someone tells a funny black joke, I'm gonna laugh.'

AVN says that in the past few years, more porn companies have been picking up on the potent mixture of cinema verité and cold hard cash, producing increasingly "funny" interracial titles with un-sly references to rapists and gorillas, causing retail stores to stop carrying some of the "funnier" titles. (...) Shane Diesel, female star of 'My Daughter is F--king a Nigga,' tells AVN that some of her biggest fans are neo-Nazis and racist Southerners. "They love it!" she says. (...)

Cram Johnson, producer of 'I Can't Believe I Sucked a Negro,' took a moment to fully explain (...) "When the races mix, especially if the purity of the sacred white woman is compromised, it gets a lot of attention -- even if the white girl is as dirty and disease-riddled as humanly possible.

Not sure if I should be more offended by the disturbing racial stereotypes or the problematic portrayal of female perfomers, I asked one of the more famous, awarded, and respected young porn stars -- local, outspoken feminist Madison Young (madisonbound.com, link NSFW) -- how she felt about this, white girl to white girl.

Young responded, "I find AVN's comments on interracial porn to be highly offensive and serves as a discredit to the entire industry. Porn is a widely consumed medium and can act as a powerful tool to educate, create connection and communication between couples, and archive our sexual culture while providing a reflection of our desires on film. This can be a positive and sexually validating experience for women and men and persons of all genders. AVN is the leading trade magazine for the adult industry, and for them to make statements like 'Negro Porn Recession Proof' gives the anti-porn community further fodder for their arguments as opposed to spotlighting sex-positive productions."

But Young's sex scenes have been marketed with, let us say, racial insensitivity; she falls into the category of Johnson's "dirty and disease-riddled" white girls. Madison told me:

I have performed in all types of porn, queer, soft core, girl/girl, boy/girl, interracial etc. I prefer to perform in productions that are sex-positive or queer-produced, but it takes a lot of anal scenes to run a feminist art space. And I also feel that it is important to exhibit sex-positive performances and women being aggressive around their sexuality in more mainstream vanilla porn. If we want to create change we can't just stand within the periphery but need to interject ourselves into their machine. Doing this means that I often end up being surrounded by anti-queer, anti-trans, and racist individuals and productions.

It's difficult to leave the safety of our San Francisco bubble for the San Fernando Valley but I'm aware that when I do this I'm stepping out of my comfort zone and given a chance to educate both on set and in the films. I enjoy sharing erotic experiences with people of all gender identities and sexual orientations as well as people of all ethnic and racial backgrounds. As a performer in LA, I can only control the way in which I connect with my screen partner, which for me, is looking them in the eyes, connecting with them, sharing energetic eroticism with my partners and communicating with them around the sex that we are having. I recall in one of the interracial films in which I was featured I actually got the director to allow me to teach a bit of a tantric lesson in the scene.

The LA porn world has gotten to the point where the majority of the material that they are producing is something that I would call 'fast food porn.' It's junk food. Offensive and artery-clogging porn. I'm trying to change what's in the happy meal one sex-positive veggie burger at a time -- but I can't control the marketing around their product. It's one of the reasons that several years ago I started directing my own product, so that I could have more control over the product and create porn that couples can watch together and that encourages women to try new things sexually in a safe and sane environment.

Young isn't the only one who feels this way, and while technology eats DVD porn for lunch and the dated stereotypes get even older, more and more porn performers and directors of all shades have been steadily increasing their visibility outside this narrow lens -- with much success. Female director Candida Royalle's "Afrodite Superstar" boasted an African American female director (and ironically garnered seven AVN award nominations), and in the DVD extras one of the actresses, Revay, made solid points about being more aware of which companies she works with so that her porn work won't show up in films with racially insensitive titles. Well known African American male performer Mr. Marcus also commented that he was excited to be involved in such a black-positive production.

Sex educator Thomas Roche reminds me, "Several male African-American performers own their own production companies: Lexington Steele, Mr. Marcus and Sean Michaels, and I'm sure there are others by now. If 'big black c--k' is what gets a consumer hot, I would encourage them to actually put their money where the big black c--k is. Those guys are talented and from my experience their hearts are very much in the right place. They've frankly got the deck stacked against them in an industry that would like to fetishize them for being African American, but allow them no other agency or expression. Sound familiar? This is an old story: racial minorities put in a box and asked to stay there. As consumers and as creators, let's not just keep telling the same story over and over again."

"I'm a queer woman of color who makes adult content." Shine Louise Houston of locally run Pink and White Productions (link NSFW) states. "Sometimes I ask myself why I do it. Then I read articles like the one in AVN about the 'interracial porn market' and I remember why very quickly."

Shine features performers of color regularly in her hardcore films, but tells me:

There's nothing wrong with the fantasies that turn us on, but as a producer I believe I have a responsibility to my audience as well as to the people I work with. Racial slurs and jokes are racist. Racism is still very much alive in America as are so many other fears. But even when I'd like to condemn producers of racially inflammatory content I can't fully bring myself to do that. I think the perpetuation of the myth of the threat of the black cock is reckless. It's a dangerous fear to reinforce. Remember Emmett Till.

But I also believe everyone has the right to free speech so if I say they should stop what they're doing, I'm also saying I have no right to a voice either. I also believe in free will. Models can find their own comfort levels and decide which productions to join, but this is a slippery slope. Racism, particularly in its history with black people, functions by getting black people to become complicit in their own oppression. Nothing I say will change the industry or anyone who is steeped in their own racial insecurities. What I can do is run my company the way I want to.

I believe there's a lot of room and need to create adult content that's real, that's respectful and powerful. In the article one of the models comments that 'porno is not a place to become political'. I think it's the perfect place to become political. It's a place where money, sex, media, and ethics converge.

Locally-based Hapa performer Jiz Lee (jizlee.com, link NSFW) told me, "I think the racial layout of mainstream porn is such a mindf--k. It's like a magnified look at race and power in our economy. And 'interracial' is particularly curious to me because it stands out as the only straight category that isn't defined by the female actor -- i.e., 'Asian' or 'Latina' indicates a white male with an Asian or Latina female; however, 'interracial' indicates black men with white women. It's bizarre to me."

It may be that some porn producers cling to the extremes of the "interracial" umbrella to survive the economic storm. Lee thinks that the exact opposite of marketing "funny" racial slurs is the recipe for success and survival saying, "Personally I see porn as a medium for social change, and diverse casting more adequately reflects my own identity and community. Perhaps this authenticity is one of the reasons indie porn is also 'recession proof.'"

Madison Young not only agreed, but nailed the notion of rehashing racial stereotypes as a business model to a tree, saying, "As far as interracial porn being 'recession proof?' I think that the only way for the adult video industry to survive is to start producing high-quality production and to start caring about their content instead of following a formula for a product that is failing. There are new markets of porn consumers and audiences developing for women, couples, LGBT, and Gen-X. Porn isn't just for a demographic of a white 50-year-old man. And these new demographics are willing to buy -- and are loyal to the studios -- that produce content that they enjoy."

As always, gentle and fair-minded reader (and porn consumer), I'll leave the final opinion up to you.

Blue headlines at conferences ranging from ETech, The Forbes Internet Leadership Conference, LeWeb and SXSW: Interactive, to Google Tech Talks at Google, Inc. Her tech site is Techyum; her audio and e-books are at Digita Publications.

For more information and links to Web sites discussed in Open Source Sex, go to Violet Blue's Web site, tinynibbles.com.